Hello
I Have a TF5800PVR. Last night upon turning on I was just getting a single dot on the led display instead of the channel number. I turned it off overnight. Now when turning on the channel number is showing correctly and I can change channel but mystuff is not loading.

Yes Andy did change the capacitors for me two years ago (fantastic service thanks Andy)

I've tried installing Topmanager on my laptop and connecting to the Topfield via usb cable but I'm getting the following message

Connecting to Toppy...
Attempting to open USB connection using tfWinUSB.dll ...
USB connection to Toppy established
Checking visibility of directories on the Toppy
Error: DirectoryExists exception failure (#:\ProgramFiles\)
Top level directory found
Connected to Toppy

It did say in windows it had failed to install drivers, don't know whether that makes any difference.

When trying to browse the program files in Topmanager it is showing as empty.

When looking at the topfield on the TV with just the default Topfield interface loading the recordings area is showing no recordings, but at the bottom is showing as 1MB free of 152625MB and says insufficient space available if you try and record ( there was plenty of space left on the disk before it went wrong.

Geoff that's a very kind offer were you meaning physically take the HDD itself out and post it, I'd be very happy to pay for you to have a go at having a look at it.

I do wonder if the HDD might be feeling its age as the Topfield is 11 years old.

As TopManager tried to connect to the disk, this shows that it is visible and probably working ok but the file structure has been corrupted (TM does a sanity check that it can see the directories)

I should be able to recover the data for you; how well depends on the level of corruption. Typically, I can get back the recordings and you have to reload the taps etc. However, if you have my fsSave tap installed in Auto Start, I should be able to recover everything apart from those few disk clusters that have been overwritten.

People have put them in before, but the HDD often isn't the bottleneck. Even recording 2 programmes and watching a third, even a slow 5400 disk isn't overly stretched. I'm not sure if MS would load the archive quicker if you have a huge 1Tb disk.

An SSD should make MyStuff load marginally faster as it eliminates the rotation delay when seeking for a file. However, this rotational delay is of the order of 10 ms so 200 files is going to save around 0.2 of a second (it will probably be a bit better but I wouldn't expect it to be significantly faster).

An SSD isn't necessary for a PVR and, as Juwlz says, the type of I/O isn't really suitable for an SSD but yeah, they should work (I think andyfras posted that he had installed one in his toppy). I suspect that few have experience of them because they used to have a limited capacity and were expensive.

I don't get any problem with responsiveness in MyStuff - apart from the 1-2 mins start up. If you have slow response when accessing the archive, set the "Exclusive mode" to Extreme (option T1)

Your best bet is to get a replacement disk that suits your budget (andyfras may have old disks and/or can supply a suitable adapter and cable if you go for a more modern drive). A larger disk in itself does not lead to longer start times; this is down to the number of recordings you have made (but it will lead to longer starts if you keep more recordings than you had on your smaller "dead" disk). Start time is not an issue if you always delete recordings after you have watched them. Modern disks tend to be quieter.

Re your old disk, does it show any recordings when you press Archive on the remote? (I'm trying to establish whether the disk is visible to the toppy (just in case you haven't reconnected it properly).

Hi Thanks for the replies all. I'll skip the SSD then. I think I read a post elsewhere suggesting that a modern SATA drive with an adapter was the best bet

Geoff, when I press Archive nothing happens at all. I have the power connector plugged in and the interface cable, and I can hear the HDD tick, but not sure it is making a normal operational HDD noise.

I'll try dropping Andy an email to see if he has any specific HDD suggestions. We've only ever half filled the existing HDD so I'm not bothered about getting a larger one.

It sounds as though the toppy isn't seeing the disk; try
1) Press Menu on Remote
2) Select Installation
3) See if "Format Hard Disk" is enabled i.e. same colour as other options (don't do it!)

If it is not enabled then this means that the toppy is not detecting the disk (either because it has died or because you haven't connected it up correctly).
Try reconnecting it and, make sure that the connector is centred in the socket (sometime it is possible to put it in offset). Also, before connecting, check that you haven't bent any of the little pins on the disk.

Finally, make sure that the toppy is disconnected from the power for at least two minutes before delving inside it!

No format is greyed out I think it has probably died. Thanks for the tips, I've checked it's centered and none of the pins are bent.

I just remembered I have an old 60gb IDE disk hanging about, when plugging that into the toppy I can hear it spin up and spin down when turned on and off unlike the original Toppy HDD which only clicks.

Any thoughts on a specific hard drive model to buy, I'd rather buy a new one than second hand. 160gb would be fine. No louder than the current one would be good.

I just remembered I have an old 60gb IDE disk hanging about, when plugging that into the toppy I can hear it spin up and spin down when turned on and off unlike the original Toppy HDD which only clicks.

When the old disk was running, was Format enabled?

If not, perhaps there is a problem with the connection of the Toppy itself.

If Format is available, it would indicate the newer disc had some problem. If you do not want the data on the old disc, you could try formatting it!

With the "new" disk when I put it in the topfield and first turned it on it asked me if I wanted to format the drive (it is an old drive from a pc so I presumed it wanted to do a format to work properly with the topfield). I decline the format but when looking in the menu the format option was grayed out the same as with the original disk.